When looking at these primary maps, its almost as if Obama/Clinton and Romney/Santorum look like the same urban/rural split.

It's not so much an urban/rural cleavage in the Republican primary so much as it is a suburban/rural divide. Santorum polled quite well in the big cities - he won Dayton and Toledo and came very close to beating Romney in Columbus. Income and religion are, I think, the two most relevant cleavages to explaining the divide.

really cool. I wonder if Ward and Trimble townships are especially libertarian. What's up with the one Gingrich precinct?

I think that's just an anomalous result in a part of the state in which Gingrich's achieved his best results - in the rural vicinity of Dayton. There's nothing particularly unusual about Perry Township (52 votes for Gingrich, 44 Santorum, 43 Romney, 13 Paul).

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Quote from: New York Times, September 15, 1960

Rep. Wharton says being a Congressman is a full-time job these days; there would be no time for doing television comedies.

Mr. Vidal shrugs and lets his cocker spaniel lick the Chateau Yquem off his fingers.

Re: the 2008 Democratic map - it seems like you can really pick out where the Dixiecrat vote was/is still strong (WV, AR, Northern Alabama, OK, KY, etc.), in that they massively favored Clinton, and you can see where most White voters seem to have just become 100% Republicans (MS, Southern Alabama, SC, etc.).

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"That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence built"